Bobby Robson, you played one hell of a game

Millions will have seen the poignant footage of a frail and wheelchair-bound Sir Bobby Robson bidding a final public farewell to the world last Sunday at St James’ Park – the place he always knew as his ‘second home’.

He was surrounded by fans, former players and his family. It was a fitting send-off for a man so universally admired and loved, and those close to him knew the tremendous act of will and determination that underpinned his appearance at the England v Germany Legends game held in Newcastle in his honour.

His doctors thought it would be impossible for him to attend. He had been confined to bed with a chest infection, his body weakened by tumours in his lungs and the ferocious treatment he had endured. But he was determined to be there. And that, with Sir Bobby, was enough.

Winner's medal: Sir Bobby Robson with his wife Elsie with his knighthood in 2002

He had a strength of character that made players give their all for him, that made fans invest their faith in him and that made me, as a writer privileged to work with him on his column for this newspaper, want to do my very best for him.

It is six years since I was given the honour of working with him in what has been the greatest professional relationship of my life. We spoke every couple of days and it was always a joy.

Most columnists go on holiday at some point. I expected the same to be true of Sir Bobby. But he never wanted to miss a column. He was always available. He would call at all hours with ideas, insights and views. He took it very seriously because the paper and his readers were his links to the football he missed.

As a player for Fulham, West Brom and England and then a manager with Vancouver, Fulham, Ipswich, England, PSV Eindhoven, Sporting Lisbon, Porto, Barcelona and Newcastle United, Sir Bobby travelled the world in the name of the game he loved above all others.

He told me that he was always aware, and a little bit guilty, of the extent to which his family life had been sacrificed as a result. I don’t believe that his wife, Elsie, or his sons, Paul, Mark and Andrew, would say they felt second best for a moment.

But Sir Bobby always promised Elsie that one day they would ‘go home’ – he meant the North East – and buy their dream home.

The very month he did just that, he was sacked by Newcastle. It was August 2004 and he and Elsie had just moved into their palatial home in the village of High Urpeth.

For the first time, Sir Bobby put his wife first. He was desperate to return to football but he turned down jobs all over the country because, for the first time in their lives, Elsie refused to move with him.

After so many years of travelling the world, they were home. Sir Bobby, as fiercely loyal and devoted a husband as he was, accepted it.

That house became a sanctuary for Sir Bobby and a source of tremendous pride. He’d show you every room. I remember asking him how much the chandelier in the front room cost and he smiled and said: ‘More than your car.’

But inactivity was not a state that suited Sir Bobby. When no longer in full-time football, he kept himself active – mentally and, for as long as humanly possible, physically.

When he was too ill to mow his lawn, in which he took great pride, he got himself a little sit-on tractor and chugged up and down on that.

He wrote his column and joined the committee advising on which sporting personalities receive New Year Honours. He wrote an autobiography and thousands flocked to book signings around the country.

Tribute: Fans pay their respects to a sporting legend

Not one of the people who met Sir Bobby would ever go away disappointed. He spoke with the same, even charm to everybody, from A-list celebrity to man on the street. It was a remarkable gift.

I never ceased to be amazed at how fans loved him. In 2006, England lost the World Cup quarter-final against Portugal but you’d never have known it from the fans. I was with him – he was analysing the game for The Mail on Sunday – as thousands mobbed him for an autograph or handshake. We took refuge in the back of a blacked-out ambulance.

I remember, not long after first meeting him, flying to Portugal for the day to interview him. Our work done, we went for a walk before I had to catch my plane.

When the time came to head to the airport, he asked where my bag was. I, rather smugly, said I didn’t have one, that I just had my passport in my top pocket. That’s when I discovered my top pocket was empty. In the scorching heat, I had to run around town, retracing my steps.

Sir Bobby was 71 at the time. He was one of the most famous football managers in the world and I was a nobody reporter but he insisted on coming with me, pounding the pavements until we’d found my passport and all was well. I often think about that day. I can’t think of any other man in his position who would have bothered. But that was Sir Bobby.

He was first diagnosed with his fatal cancer in February 2006, just after his 73rd birthday. While most pensioners might have celebrated a birthday with a pint in their local, he went on a skiing holiday to Switzerland.

On the slopes, Sir Bobby took a corner too sharply and fell over, injuring his ribs. When he returned to England to have an X-ray, doctors found a shadow on his lung – it was a tumour.

Twice he had beaten cancer in the Nineties but this was different. The tumour was removed but several months later he was taken ill at an Ipswich Town football match, where he was honorary club president. A brain tumour was diagnosed.

The operation to remove it caused some nerve cell damage and left Sir Bobby without movement down his left arm and leg.

‘Everyone thinks I’ve had a stroke,’ he said. He taught himself to walk and move his left arm again with typical dedication.

The next time tumours were discovered, they were inoperable. But instead of the end, this was, I think, the start of the most exceptional time of his life.

Always interested in talking about other people and things than himself, he launched the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation to raise £500,000 for a cancer research centre in the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle. He reached the target in seven weeks and today the figure is approaching £2million.

He approached the gruelling rounds of chemotherapy and radiotherapy as if they were football fixtures, mapping them out and planning quiet weeks to follow the energy-sapping treatments.

Our schedule of writing and meeting worked around his treatment. As long as he had strength to speak on the phone, he did so.

I last saw Sir Bobby in May. It was the end of the season and we were visiting Newcastle United. It was the first time I noticed he’d declined. The mind was still willing as he spoke about needing ‘11 Geordie heroes’ to avoid relegation, but the body was weakening.

Yesterday I spoke to Sir Bobby’s eldest son Paul. He recalled how, in his last days, his father had conserved what energy he had to go to the game at St James’s Park. ‘My brother Mark and I dressed him and put him in an adapted wheelchair and drove him to the match,’ said Paul.

‘I was on the pitch when they played Nessun Dorma. I could see the tears welling in his eyes. He probably realised he was an actor leaving the stage for the last time. ‘When he got home after the game, all the energy had gone out of him and it was such a blessing when he passed away peacefully on Friday.’

I will always be grateful for having known Sir Bobby. I wrote thousands of words with him but none is truly adequate to sum up how remarkable a man he was.

But the truth is there on the tributes at the gates of his home, at St James’ Park and at Ipswich. Bobby, you played a hell of a game.